Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Harris or Trump will soon occupy the most violent elected office in their homeland (and the world). Trump and Harris “are destroying what is left of the democratic institutions of this country.” ‘Democratic institutions’? When were they ‘democratic’?  “ The existing two parties are identical in their genocidal militarism and backing of the Israeli settler colony, with one openly planning its  fascist takeover  of the entire country.”  The 50/60 per cent of eligible Americans who do vote “are conditioned by the commercial logic of their degenerate capitalism to choose between Coke and Pepsi, McDonald's and KFC, Nike and Reebok, Apple and Samsung, or Trump and Harris.” I have always liked Dabashi’s articles . I fear though he is sliding into repeating sentences with different words and tone.

“Over the last eight years, but especially during the Biden administration, core aspects of Trumpism have been institutionalised. Let’s take a look at the record. First, the ‘China problem’ identified by Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, became a bipartisan obsession. It is now hegemonic to the extent that Harris attacked Trump from the right on this issue during their debate, condemning him for having ‘sold us out’ by selling chips to China. (He, in fact, limited sales of chips to China.) Second, economic nationalism – including protectionism, stimulus and a domestic industrial policy – was embraced far more vigorously by Biden than Trump. Ironically, he was enabled in this by pressure from the Sanders left, just as Trump was inhibited by pressure from the Republican right. Third, the far right’s borders agenda has been adopted uncontested, and now forms a major plank in Harris’s platform. Fourth, in all essential ways, Biden adopted Trump’s foreign policy. The withdrawal from Afghanist...

“[ I]nvocations of human rights and humanitarian intervention are selective.” It s like the West’s selective reading of history . “It can be difficult to understand why there was ever so much faith in such an order” – the international liberal order preached in and after Nato’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo. “[N]o Western government has invoked R2P [the Right to Protect] in response to ethnic cleansing campaigns in Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh or Gaza.” “[A]s the British political scientist Richard Sakwa has stressed, Russia’s aversion to R2P was not because Vladimir Putin is ‘the crude defender of sovereignty as so often presented’, but rather the West’s selective deployment of it .” (My italics N.M.) “[W]ill the death of the liberal order clear the way for a more democratic, accountable and egalitarian world?” I am not optimistic. One of the reasons is that articles like Lynch’s are so critical and an antidote to amnesia, a help for students, etc. but does not delve into structu...

A good piece by Adam Shatz. “Hizbullah will slowly rebuild, and Nasrallah and his cadres will be replaced by a new and no less embittered generation of leaders who will remember the furies unleashed by Israel in Lebanon: the killings, maimings and displacement caused by one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in the 21 st  century. Nasrallah’s death is as humiliating a setback for his movement as Nasser’s defeat in 1967 was for the Arab cause. But nothing feeds resistance like humiliation .”

Harris is pronounced like هرس in Arabic, which means to ground/to crush.  Another face of  liberal imperialism:  Kamala is just like her predecessor s.

‘ The decaying American empire ’ argument is disputable. The comparison with the collapse of the Soviet Union misses the different economic structures of the two countries. The US economic power has not been experiencing a long term stagnation, for example.  Actually, the argument should be the way around: in 1980s there was no ‘whip of external necessity’ compelling the US to outcompete the Soviet Union. The latter was not an economic threat to the US. Today China is the ‘external whip’ but to an already more powerful American economy – a dynamic one in terms of capital-intensive industries, productivity and an array of industrially-advanced allies and subordinates.

On the murder of children

According to US liberals,   Trump's imperialism is ugly, whereas Biden's is 'kinder and gentler' with moral authority.

Achieving objectives: Four Israeli lives worth hundreds of Palestinian ones.  Western complicity in crime continues

“It’s no secret that Biden’s push for a Saudi deal is largely about escalating its proxy war against Iran and “great power competition” with China .”

A regional war led by the US and a hot of Arab regimes, UK, in defence of Israel Related “Though the U.S. created the conditions that may have encouraged Netanyahu’s gambit , it was reportedly Israel, acting on its own behalf, without coordination with its allies, that precipitated the latest grave escalation.”

A valuable insight on Cuba since the early 1990s. I find it strange though that someone trained in ‘Marxist historiography’ calls the pre-1989 eastern European countries / the USSR ‘socialist countries’ and defends the ‘Western’ sanctions on Russia.

 واشنطن والسوريالية

“Ocasio-Cortez doubled down on her support for Biden, despite his carrying out what she says are unacceptable atrocities. Ocasio-Cortez has always steadfastly  supported  apartheid Israel's ‘ right to exis t ’.  When she had the opportunity to vote against the US funding for Israel's Iron Dome weapons system, which targets Palestinians, she did not.” She is complicit and want Americans to join in endorsing ethnic cleansing .

“Not one of the rape accusations from the October 7 attack, however, came from a survivor, and there seems to be no reliable evidence to document any of the alleged crimes . It is therefore important to look at what irrefutable documentation we do have, and see how persuasive it is, as well as who is making the allegations, and what ultimate political purpose they serve. Are these allegations being made to help potential survivors of rape, or are they exploiting the possible rapes, to further Israel’s genocidal agenda?”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant give a joint press conference in Tel Aviv on Dec. 18, 2023.   Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images State terrorism and industrial killing won’t defeat the armed insurgency

“Nearly  425,000 Cubans have fled for the United States  in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, shattering previous records.  Instead of moving to stem the flow by focusing on root causes in Cuba, the Biden White House has been signalling support in recent days for Republican-backed border policies.” Biden is sticking with Trump’s policy

We must never forget. We must never forgive. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”  —American historian Howard Zinn Ethnic Cleansing , Settler Colonialism and Apartheid My interview with Ilan Pappe  (audio) The book is available in English    and in   Arabic 

Fall in line, be ‘a liberal free-marketeer’ and open your country to our capital. If we don’t invade you, we make sure we kill you slowly. “Cubans have lived under a US economic embargo since 1962. Now, following a disastrous currency reform, inflation is spiralling, food and medicines are in short supply, and the black market is rampant. Food scarcity drives prices up: queueing for vegetables, Havana, 31 March 2023.  Adalberto Roque · AFP · Getty After a period of relaxation during Barack Obama’s second term (2013-17), Donald Trump brought in 243 new sanctions. In 2019 alone, 54 ship owners and 27 companies were fined for carrying fuel to Cuba.  That same year, the US Treasury Department sanctioned 34 vessels operated by the companies Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Ballito Bay Shipping (headquartered in Liberia) and Proper In Management (registered in Greece). Trump expanded the embargo, enabling individuals and companies to be prosecuted for investing in former American com...

“Liberalism’s  dogged insistence on nonviolence  and other manifestations of bourgeois respectability further falsely render antifascist self-defense and anti-colonial rebellion indistinguishable from fascist and imperialist belligerence, implicitly (or explicitly) condoning the state and para-state violence that typifies the latter.”